112 113 cerro de pasco The greatest investment of the XXth century In the following years there would be a series of conflicts that would lay the foundations for the construction of a trade union movement but, especially, a group considered anarchist by the elites of the army and Peruvian society: the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana) APRA, would come to the fore with Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre at the helm. That’s how Peru advanced after Leguía. The union struggle Before the end of the Oncenio (eleven-year rule), some attempts had already been made to organise popular movements. One of the most notorious occurred after the Morococha tragedy. According to the account of the Amauta magazine, then directed by José Carlos Mariátegui, the commission appointed by the government came to the conclusion that the collapse of the “lake of colours” was due to a natural event. However, according to the magazine, the mining company was operating in two overlapping galleries below the bottom of the lake and when a chimney was opened between them, a design error was produced, followed by heavy precipitation. This resulted in a virtual torrent of mud and stones sucked up like a funnel through the two galleries, abruptly burying the workers. The following month, on January 15, “Labour” magazine published an article on working conditions in the mines, in which it underlined “if mining workers were able to use their right to associate and organise, they would have already found a way to channel their grievances and the corresponding legislation would already be in place”. In October of the following year, at the Matamula park in Lima, the Sociedad Pro Cultura Popular was founded, which undertook a series of actions that would lay the foundations of a labour movement in the country. After several disagreements between the mining company and the group of workers that were beginning to organise under the guidance of representatives of the Socialist Party, the great strike of 1929 took place in Morococha, which is considered a milestone in the history of the trade union movement in Peru. As a result of the strike, on January 11, 1930, the Morococha Mines Committee was formed and on August 28 the La Oroya Smelter Employees’ and Workers’ Union was formed. The creation of this union was not a coincidence. Since it began to operate with the demand for greater technological knowledge, the company needed to ensure the permanence of its best trained workers in the smelter. This presence led to the emergence of the first organisations defending workers’ rights in the central region in Cerro. And those same bases convened the First Regional Congress of Mining and Metallurgical Workers of the Centre, from which they would constitute the first Federation of Mining Workers, with the idea of b ringing together similar organisations in the rest of the country. The first demands of this Federation were related to wages and working conditions, but also the reinstatement of dismissed workers, the abolition of the service contract system, the right to compensation in the event of dismissal or accidents, the regulation of work shifts, the payment of overtime and improvements in the camps, among others. Inflamed by the political turmoil, the workers began to present other nationalist demands and the tension continued to grow. At the other extreme was the company, burdened by the crisis in the U.S. economy, its main market, and forced to adopt austerity measures. And, as if that were not enough, the government’s blow was also felt, as the latter knew nothing better than to apply brute force to try to safeguard internal order, enforce the law and protect the private investment that the country itself had welcomed. In other words, the snapshot from more than eighty years ago is almost a copy of what continues to happen today in Peru. With the life of the city integrated into the activities of the company, each crisis was charged with a lot of emotion. THE SOCIALIST AND APRISTA LEADERS WERE UNABLE TO INTEGRATE THE PEASANTS INTO THEIR UNION MOVEMENT, SO THEY FOCUSED ON GAINING MORE INFLUENCE ON THE COMPANY’S PERMANENT STAFF.
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